Our legal eagle, Andrew ‘Chef’ Prendergast from Motorcycle Solicitors White Dalton provides the answer…
Q. Can you help me settle a debate that is currently raging on a Facebook group I am in. A woman who has popped up in the group (she is not a biker, but her husband is I believe) has started offering ‘sparkly helmets’ (no, this is not some ‘special service’ you may see on a late-night TV documentary).
Instead, if you give her your helmet, she will glue crystals and beads, etc., to it and personalise it for you. So far, I have seen photographs of Union Jacks and lions’ faces, etc. You get the idea. Whilst it’s not my cup of tea (spot the old man with a plain matt black lid!) I get that everyone is different and like different things.
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However, the issue of insurance has come up, both with regards to whether she has any (she has gone very quiet on this topic), and whether there may be some kind of legal fight if you fell off in an accident and suffered a head injury. What do you think?
A. There are so many puns I could make about having a ‘sparkly helmet’ but… of course… I am a grown-up, obviously (ha-ha! I now have Sid James in my head…). Anyway, back to the questions.
Firstly, if she is running a business, she needs to make sure she has adequate public liability insurance in case something goes wrong, and she gets sued. Whilst I don’t want to put a dampener on anyone’s business, if this were me personally, I would be very reluctant to let some random person stick beads and crystals on my lid, and if I did, I would want to know she was insured.
Moving on, I am no scientist, but the outer shells of helmets should be treated very carefully. Whilst they do not have anything about sticking crystals on, Shoei’s website, for example, states: ‘Only stickers or films with solvent-free adhesive may be used’ and, ‘The helmet shell must not be additionally coated with clear lacquer’ and ‘…it is possible to paint our helmets, but please only use water-based paints…’ and ‘We cannot make any statements about the protective effect of the helmet after repainting, nor can we guarantee this. Please note that painting the helmet voids its warranty.’
Therefore, I suspect putting glue all over a helmet will not be good for the shell, and I can guarantee any manufacturer’s warranty will be void if you did it.
As for an accident, I know of no case law on this specific point. However, if you had a ‘sparkly helmet’ and suffered a serious head injury, I could see a Defendant insurer at least investigating to see if they could prove ‘contributory negligence’ on the part of the rider. In other words, they may try to prove that if the helmet was not covered in glue and crystals, etc., the rider wouldn’t have been as injured.
If a Defendant insurer was successful, I could envisage perhaps a 15% to 25% reduction in the compensation paid out for the head injury aspect of the claim.
If this were me personally, I would not be getting a ‘sparkly helmet’. You only have one head.
